Category Archives: Balkans

Is This the Sarajevo Moment of the Next World War?

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A Russian fighter jet was shot down today by Turkey. The downed plane was a Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer. I don’t know much about military aircraft, but there’s more info on the Su-24 here, and (with videos) here.

Both pilots reportedly ejected and parachuted from the damaged aircraft. The Washington Post reports that at least one of the pilots was captured by local Turkmen tribesmen who live in that part of Syria. However, The Aviationist reports that both pilots are dead.

The Turks claim the jet violated Turkish airspace, and overflew Turkish territory. The Russians insist their fighter remained over Syrian territory during the entire sortie. However, if the radar track below is accurate, the Su-24 does seem to have flown over an appendix of Turkish territory that pokes out into Syria near the Mediterranean.

Below are excerpts from the report in The Washington Post:

Turkey Downs Russian Military Aircraft Near Syria’s Border

BEIRUT — Turkish warplanes shot down a Russian jet Tuesday after NATO-member Turkey says the plane violated its airspace on the border with Syria, a major escalation in the Syrian conflict that could further strain relations between Russia and the West.

Russian officials confirmed that a Russian Su-24 fighter had been shot down, but insisted it had not violated Turkish airspace.

“A stab in the back,” complained Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Turkey’s military, however, said that the Russian jet was warned multiple times before it was shot down by two F-16 fighter jets in the border zone in western Syria in mountains not far from the Mediterranean coast.

The downing brings renewed attention to a scenario feared for months by the Pentagon and its partners: a potential conflict arising from overlapping air missions over Syria — with Russia backing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a U.S.-led coalition conducting airstrikes the Islamic State.

NATO and Russia have been at odds over a series of flash points since the Cold War — including the NATO-led bombings in Bosnia in the 1990s and NATO support for Ukraine last year against pro-Moscow separatists — but the Syrian conflict has now put the two powers in possibly dangerous proximity.

It also could complicate a diplomatic push to bring greater international coordination to the fight against the Islamic State.

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The “Refugee” Crisis from a Croatian Perspective

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I exchanged several emails today with our Croatian correspondent Vortac about the “refugee” crisis as it is currently being felt in the Balkans. Before we get to Vortac’s comments, however, let’s do a brief review of the major migration routes now being used by “refugees” to get to Central and Western Europe.

The bulk of the migrants pass from Turkey into Greece, either by the land route through Thrace, or more often by sea from Anatolia to the Aegean islands. The island arrivals are ferried to Athens by the Greek government.

The “refugees” then proceed northwards through Greece, and thence into Macedonia and Serbia. Until Hungary closed its border with Serbia, the preferred route to Austria passed through Hungary. For a brief period after the border closure, the migrants made a little side-trip through Croatia to get to Hungary. In response, Hungary closed its border with Croatia. Very little of the migration flow passes through Hungary now.

The new alternate route proceeds northwestwards through Croatia and Slovenia into Austria, and from there into Bavaria and points north.

The following map shows the current migration routes through Croatia and Slovenia to Austria. I could only find a German version of it, but it should be fairly clear. Ungarn is Hungary and Österreich is Austria. The dark blue lines show the migration routes. The light blue line is the outer border of the Schengen Area. The broken red lines show border controls at internal Schengen borders. The solid red line marks the closed border between Hungary and Croatia. The black line represents a border fence when solid, and when dotted, a planned border fence.


(Click to enlarge)

As you can see, a feeder line from Bosnia joins the main flow. Presumably many of those “refugees” are Bosniaks, i.e. Muslims.

Notice also that the route forks in Croatia before entering Slovenia. We’ve previously covered the eastern route and its deleterious effects in Austria — the latest videos from Spielfeld are horrific. But I haven’t yet seen any footage or photos from Klagenfurt on the western route, so I don’t know how bad it is there.

Here’s Vortac’s email about conditions in Croatia:

The consequences of multicultural insanity have finally reached Croatia. Luckily, I live in the western part of the country, which hasn’t been affected by the refugees so far, but I am aware it’s only a question of time now.

Croatians were under the Ottoman yoke for centuries, and people are generally very cautious (to put it mildly) about Islam in any shape or form, but there are big differences in opinions how to deal with the crisis at hand, from advocating firmly closed borders at one end all the way to “we should welcome refugees heartily and offer them jobs” on the other end. Our government has taken a position somewhere in the middle, opening the borders and allowing all the refugees to pass freely, shipping them as fast as possible through the country (previously to Hungary and now to Slovenia), but it’s obvious this strategy will buy us maybe a couple more months, and then we will face progressively increasing problems soon afterwards.

What’s even more depressing than this invasion is the sorry demise of the EU political system, with local politicians and bureaucrats bickering about how many refugees can be shipped through, and even threatening each other with “sanctions” according to the Schengen Agreement, as if that agreement has not been a dead piece of paper for many months now.

A few weeks ago, the Croatian government even closed official border crossings with Serbia, causing huge delays in legal, international traffic. It was a desperate attempt to force Serbian government to re-route refugees to Hungary and not to Croatia. So we had a situation where legal crossings were impossible, with a huge column of trucks stalled at the border, but only 100 meters away refugees were crossing the same border on foot, illegally, without any documents. That insane policy was rescinded after a few days, and official border crossings were opened again, but it’s a good example of the Orwellian levels of absurdity we are reaching here now. The EU Politburo is abandoning its peripheral members, and local politicians — used to getting directives from Brussels — are now left on their own to deal with the situation.

Again, I must say how useful a source of information GoV is in a crisis like this. Even now, when Croatia is experiencing the full brunt of multicultural disaster, the mainstream media are still serving up the usual PC/MC propaganda. In fact, it’s not even propaganda now, it’s becoming more and more obvious that the journalists themselves do not believe in what they are writing anymore, but it’s like they are stuck in a loop and cannot force their brains to write anything different now.

When I wrote him back, I said this:

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PEGIDA on Orbán: Protect the Borders of Europe

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The following video is an excerpt from a speech given by Tatjana Festerling at the weekly PEGIDA rally in Dresden on Monday night. Ms. Festerling had just returned from a visit to Hungary, and her report paid homage to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Many thanks to Nash Montana for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

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Mob Violence at the Hungarian Border

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A few days ago, just after Hungary closed and fortified its border crossings with Serbia, a crowd of “refugees” stormed the new fence, breaking down a gate and attempting to climb over into Hungary. They were met with pepper spray and tear gas, and the photos of people choking and coughing were what made the media news reports — especially clips in which women and children were visible.

However, if you examine the raw footage from those incidents (RT is the best source), you’ll notice that more than 80%, perhaps 90%, of the rioters at the border were fit young men. In the unedited footage you can hear them chant “Allahu akhbar”, although this has been omitted from or edited out of most clips shown on MSM outlets.

There were active agitators at the front of the crowd, next to the fence. These kinetic activists were apparently shouting instructions and encouragement to their fellow migrants as they attempted to breach the fence. At least one of the leaders was carrying a megaphone while riding on another man’s shoulders:

Our Hungarian correspondent Dzsihádfigyelő writes to say that the police are now actively searching for the ringleaders of the attack on the border crossing. They stated that the attack against the state border was an act of terrorism, and they want to find the leaders of the crowd. The police website posted the following appeal in Hungarian, English, German, and Arabic:

Riot Police National Bureau of Investigation — Announcement

Police are asking anyone with information about the identity or the whereabouts of any of these people to contact police at nni.info@nni.police.hu.

Below is a video of an announcement (in English) by a press spokesman for the Hungarian police:

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The OSCE Wants to Enforce the OIC Narrative

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A few days ago we posted video excerpts from one of the OSCE sessions in Vienna last month. Since then Vlad has been working on a slightly longer version using the same material. The video below includes additional comments made by the panelists, and more detailed annotations.

These excerpts were recorded at the OSCE Security Days at the Hofburg, Vienna, on May 21, 2015. The event was the Night Owl Session: “How can the media help prevent violent radicalization that leads to terrorism?” It was an official OSCE forum, with opening and closing remarks by OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier.

The BPE/ICLA team at OSCE included Henrik Ræder Clausen, Stephen Coughlin, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, and Renya Matti.

The panelists, from left to right, were:

  • Victor Khroul, a correspondent for Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency and Associate Professor at Moscow State University. Rossiya Segodnya is wholly owned by the Russian government, as is MSU.
  • Leila Ghandi, a Moroccan presenter for 2M TV. She is “an award winning TV host journalist, producer, commentator, book author, speaker, photographer and civil society activist.” 68% of 2M TV is owned by the Moroccan government, with the Moroccan royal family owning 20.7%
  • Randa Habib, the director of the bureau of Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Amman, Jordan.
  • Dunja Mijatović, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, from Bosnia
  • Simon Haselock, Albany Associates

So the panel consisted of a Russian, a Moroccan, a Jordanian, a Bosnian, and a Briton. No Poles. No Danes. No Czechs. No Italians. No one from a sensible European country.

It seems reasonable to assume that the Russian gentleman represents the Russian government. The three women hail from three Muslim countries that do not enforce the wearing of hijab. But are they otherwise representing the interests of the Ummah? Based on the contributions of Ms. Ghandi and Ms. Habib to the discussion about truth vs. “hate speech”, it is at least plausible that they are.

Simon Haselock is a promoter of “global governance”, UN-style. He is described as a “pioneer in media intervention in post-conflict countries” — that is, he helps the United Nations manage the news flow in areas where the “international community” has discovered a compelling interest.

Take, for example this article from 2003 discussing his role in Bosnia:

In Sarajevo, [Simon] Haselock served as media spokesman for the Office of the High Representative, the European agency governing the Bosnians in the aftermath of the Dayton Agreement. In Kosovo, he became media commissioner.

The problem, in a nutshell: He’s British, and holds to a European view of how media should work, in terms of public responsibility, free expression, libel law, and similar issues. Haselock and others like him attempted to impose a European media regime on the Bosnian and Kosovar journalists, and there is every indication the same effort will be made in Iraq.

Put simply, this means that a governmental body will supervise media. It has already been reported that Haselock has written a proposal for control of broadcast and print media, including the establishment of state electronic media and the appointment of a board that will handle “complaints about media excesses” and levy fines for misconduct. These are exactly, down to the boilerplate vocabulary, the policies that were tried in Sarajevo and Prishtina. They failed miserably, and sometimes grotesquely.

IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA, the stated mission of foreign media administrators embodied pure political correctness: It was to separate media from nationalist self-expression and political parties. This meant that although Bosnian Muslims felt they had survived a deliberate attempt at genocide, and while Serbs and Croats felt they had legitimate communal demands to put forward, their journalists were forbidden from dealing with these topics. The argument of the “internationals,” as the foreigners in the Balkans love to style themselves, was that any such commentary would constitute hate speech and would incite further violence.

Same shtick, different decade.

In his remarks, Mr. Haselock references non-Islamic terror groups that sprang from European roots. What he does not mention is that we were allowed to call them by the names they called themselves. We called them the “Red Brigades”, the “Bader-Meinhof Group” [Red Army Faction], and the “Irish Republican Army”, and we identified their ideology at the same time — which is what allowed us to counter them.

The rules are different for any group that has “Islam” and “Muslim” in its name. In such cases we are told not to use the name that the group uses for itself. We must instead identify it by a pseudonym invented by Simon Haselock or some other “media administrator”. And we must never, ever talk about Islamic ideology or sharia.

Mr. Haselock refers to “the narrative we are offering”. But whose universal values does such a narrative enforce? And against whom? And who decides?

In essence, the UN establishes narratives that are to be enforced against national identities as a requirement. Everyone on the OSCE panel supports these narratives and their enforcement.

Many thanks to Henrik Ræder Clausen for recording the close-up footage, and to Vlad Tepes for editing, annotating, and subtitling the excerpts used in this video:

(Watch the video of the entire session, 1 hr 52 mins)

Below is the transcript of Maj. Coughlin’s second comment, timed from the point where he begins speaking, as used to make the subtitles:

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Refugees: Boundlessly Reckless

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The following op-ed with a Swiss perspective on immigration was published in the Austrian daily Die Presse. Many thanks to JLH for the translation:

Refugees: Boundlessly Reckless

by Roger Köppel
June 7, 2015

Under the pressure of waves of refugees, politicians are demanding a further opening of European borders. The opposite is correct.

The waves of immigration are swelling There are more than a billion people in Africa. Europe has 733 million. The excess demographic pressure in the South is breaking new paths into the wealthy North. UNO estimates that by the year 2050, two billion mostly young Africans will be confronting ca. 691 million aging Europeans. The answer of our politicians and spin-doctors is that we should take in even more illegal economic immigrants — erroneously called refugees. This friendly offer will increase the demand.

The southern border of Europe is as open as a barn door. There is no Fortress Europe. 220,000 illegal immigrants landed on the Italian coast in the past year. This year, Germany alone expects a doubling of asylum-seekers to 500,000. No one claims responsibility for the constitutionally asserted protection of Europe’s external borders. The Italians know that illegal immigrants prefer to go to the wealthy North, and they put them on trains without registering them. Recently a Roman diplomat assured us, with charm and amid copious gestures: “The refugees just disappear.”

It is essentially clear to everyone, although no one dares to say it, that what is going on here is a widely applied abuse of our right of asylum by illegal economic refugees. It is an officially tolerated breach of the law in grand style. The Dublin Treaty on Refugees does not work. In a Europe of open borders, the overburdened Italians have no motivation to carry out the bureaucratic directives from Brussels. It is illusory to introduce an orderly asylum process in the case of tens — indeed hundreds — of thousands of immigrants flooding in. It is hardly possible to expel those who threw away their papers. Illegal, economic refugees would not be coming if they didn’t know that they could stay.

The tragic pictures and tales of capsizing smugglers’ boats and drowning people are deceptive. Most illegal immigrants manage to afford the expensive passage across the Mediterranean. It is worth the investment to escape the misery zones of Africa and Arabia for the welfare paradise of Europe. Television reports talk about war refugees and pregnant women, but the pictures show mostly young black Africans traveling north. There may be a few, individual, genuine, Geneva Convention-appropriate refugees among them. But the fact that these illegals pay thousands of francs to make the difficult passage suggests that this is more about escaping the general misery than fleeing imminent persecution.

What is the meaning of “asylum”? The motives for immigration are understandable, but there is legislation and there are asylum laws. The Federal Republic, like Switzerland, recognizes the legal claim of asylum as intended for those in peril of life and limb — for the politically persecuted. Refugees from civil war or poverty, people with no prospects, do not qualify. It isn’t that complicated. If you want to adhere to the asylum law, you must oppose its abuse. Like infractions of the tax laws or trade regulations. Those who qualify for asylum may be taken in; illegal immigrants must be immediately expelled. The opposite is true nowadays in many countries. Problems of implementation are acute. Here is one absurd example from many: the fastest growing group of asylum seekers in Switzerland isn’t Syrians, but Kosovars. At the same time, the Swiss army is serving side-by-side with the German army in Kosovo.

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Vienna is Different

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JLH has translated an op-ed by Andreas Unterberger about the rapid demographic changes currently underway in Vienna. The translator includes this note:

We could paraphrase Mark Twain: “There are facts, awful facts and godawful statistics.”

How typical too, that cosmopolitan centers are the first to be corrupted, because this is where the con-men, power brokers and know-it-alls go to assert themselves, while the rest of the country tries to get on with business. I wonder how fast the rest of the country would be transformed if the administration should start taking large numbers of refugees and shipping them off to unsuspecting towns and provinces. (I did not say “Obama”)

The translated op-ed from the independent information portal Vienna.at is below.

Vienna Is Different

by Andreas Unterberger

Nothing shows it more clearly than the unvarnished demographic figures: In recent years, Vienna has become a completely different city — one that is in some parts purely Balkan-Turkish. And it will become even more so in coming years. Isn’t City Hall being really short-sighted when it applauds this development?

To be sure, the tourist crowds in “imperial Vienna,” — center city — are largely from the West. Even though it is possible more than ever this summer to see women covered head-to-toe and Arabic men with their not-exactly-European-deportment.

The money-grubbing Tourist Office is ecstatic and sees no problems. Likewise our leftist ideologues. The rest of the Viennese are beset by powerful worries. An influx is always good for the ventilation of a society, to be sure, but if an influx is too rapid and intense, it leads from control over everyday customs, to the economy, to a complete tipping over and then to the collapse of the society.

Presently, Vienna differs more than ever from the rest of Austria. For instance, if more than half of the students in Vienna’s schools already speak some language other than German at home, then Viennese children — even with the addition of Germans, Swiss, Liechtensteiners (and presumably also Luxembourgers) and South Tyroleans — are no longer the majority there.

Religious Statistics in Vienna

Religious statistics are similar. In one generation, the percentage of Catholics has been halved — and that is despite the influx of almost totally Catholic Poles, Croats and Slovaks. Simultaneously, the number of people of no religious affiliation has risen sharply (even among immigrants). And, indeed, the third largest group is the Muslims, who have been multiplying exponentially since 1971. Trending rapidly, they are already 11% of the population, while the average across Europe is 6%, even though many of those countries — unlike Austria — have a colonialist past. Members of the Orthodox Church, too — mostly from Serbia — have increased more than seven-fold.

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Who Decided the Location of the Second Front?

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I wasn’t aware that Andy Bostom had written this article when I posted about American Betrayal early this morning. Dr. Bostom originally submitted his piece to American Thinker, and, like Diana West, was rebuffed — further evidence of the long arm of The Invisible Man.

Jeff Lipkes, Hanson Baldwin, and The World War II “Second Front Debate”

by Andrew Bostom

Déjà vu all over again, Diana West has noted at her website how she was not permitted to respond to a new round of critiques of American Betrayal at The American Thinker, which astonishingly included letter “appendices” containing two more rounds of ad hominem attacks on her by Ron Radosh and David Horowitz.

My own response to American Thinker’s “military expert” editor J.R. Dunn provides an introduction to a staid essay that was also summarily rejected without any ethical, or factual justification.

From: Andrew Bostom
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2014 8:48 AM
To: J R Dunn
Subject: Ike’s quote and your “interpretation”

One last item, as an estimable (per your own mind) World War II (WWII) “authority,” you wrote, with typically inappropriate hubris:

Re: The “Aegean” issue arises from a single quote by Eisenhower and nothing else. Ike had to have been referring to Operation Accolade, one of the Brits’ attempts at the “Underbelly”, consisting of landings in the Dodecanese. (I know something about this…

The unsuccessful British Dodecanese efforts codenamed “Accolade” — which were apparently not very large troop deployments — at any rate took place between September 8 and November 22, 1943.

Eisenhower opined the following at Cairo on November 26, 1943, 2:30 PM, i.e., AFTER the failed Brit Dodecanese campaign, and focused primarily on the Po Valley, which mentioned (initial) “harrying operations” in the Aegean, followed by a sustained campaign only after other military objectives had been achieved within Italy/the Mediterranean theater, as reported in United States Department of State, Foreign relations of the United States diplomatic papers (FRUS), The Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, (1943), pp. 359-60:

Italy was the correct place in which to deploy our main forces and the objective should be the valley of the Po. In no other area could we so well threaten the whole German structure including France, the Balkans and the Reich itself. Here also our air would be closer to vital objectives in Germany….

The next best method of harrying the enemy was to undertake operations in the Aegean. There are sufficient forces in the Mediterranean to take this area provided it is not done until after the Po line has been reached….The time to turn to the Aegean would be when the line north of Rome has been achieved. German reactions to our occupation of the islands had clearly proved how strongly they resented action on our part in this area. From here the Balkans could be kept aflame, Ploesti [Rumanian; a significant source of oil for Nazi Germany] would be threatened and the Dardanelles [a Turkish strait, connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara] might be opened. Sufficient forces should be used for operations in the Aegean and no unnecessary risks run. He considered that the earlier British occupation of the islands had been right and justified, but that the position was now different and strong German reactions could be expected. In either of the two assumptions it was essential to bring Turkey into the war at the moment that the operations in the Aegean were undertaken

You obviously compound your intellectual laziness — i.e. you NEVER bothered to read the relevant FRUS Diplomatic Papers, with a fundamental reading comprehension deficiency. This explains your non-sequiturs and generally confused, profoundly ignorant (albeit confidently asserted) “observations.” Seen in this light, although these errors are now understandable, they remain unacceptable. It is well past time for thoroughly incompetent, self-appointed “gatekeepers” like yourself to in fact be given the gate to the great benefit of intelligent readers, fully capable of separating wheat from chaff without your “remedial” censorship.

Installment two of Jeff Lipkes’ discussion of Diana West’s American Betrayal is entitled, “Diana and Ron: The Second Front.” Readers can decide for themselves whether or not Lipkes adequately represents Ms. West’s arguments by comparing his assessment to her own full chapter on the so-called “Second Front debate.” Regardless, I maintain readers wishing to understand this serious World War II (WWII) debate — and the post- WWII consensus about the geo-political consequences of its “resolution” — would do well to consider the historian Hanson Baldwin’s post-mortem assessment monograph, published shortly after WWII concluded.

Hanson W. Baldwin (d. 1991), was a military-affairs editor for The New York Times who authored over a dozen books on military and naval history and policy. Baldwin, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, joined The Times in 1929, and in 1943 won a Pulitzer Prize for his World War II reporting from the Pacific.

Before retiring from The Times, Baldwin reported on the strategy, tactics and weapons of war in Korea, Vietnam, the Middle East and other theaters. Earlier, after covering the European and Pacific battles of World War II, as well as the immediate postwar transition period, so astutely, Hanson Baldwin had already earned recognition as one of the nation’s leading authorities on military and naval affairs.

In 1950, Baldwin published a pellucid World War II strategic assessment monograph of 114 pages entitled Great Mistakes of the War. Baldwin’s summary analysis identifies, in his words, the four “great — and false — premises, certainly false in retrospect and seen by some to be false at the time,” as the following:

    1.   That the Politburo had abandoned (with the ostensible end of the Communist International) its policy of a world Communist revolution and was honestly interested in the maintenance of friendly relations with capitalist governments.
    2.   That “Joe” Stalin was a “good fellow” and we could “get along with him.” This was primarily a Rooseveltian policy and was based in part on the judgments formed by Roosevelt as a result of his direct and indirect contacts with Stalin during the war. This belief was shaken in the last months of Roosevelt’s life, partly by the Soviet stand on Poland.
    3.   That Russia might make a separate peace with Germany. Fear of this dominated the waking thoughts of our politico-strategists throughout all the early phases of the war, and some anticipated such an eventuality even after our landing in Normandy.
    4.   That Russian entry into the war against Japan was either: a) essential to victory, or b) necessary to save thousands of American lives. Some of our military men clung to this concept even after the capture of the Marianas and Okinawa.
 

The common denominator for these basic misconceptions, Baldwin argues, excepting, perhaps the second, which became a stubbornly willful “Rooseveltian policy,” was,

…lack of adequate knowledge about Russian strengths, purposes, and motivations; and inadequate evaluation and interpretation of the knowledge we did possess, or failure to accept and apply it.

Baldwin reiterates his contention (i.e., regarding points 1 and 2) that American wartime policy hinged upon avoidable fallacious premises, which caused us to be victimized by our own hagiographic propaganda about Communism, Stalin, and the Soviet Union, observing:

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Day 14: Bigotry

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MC wraps up his first two weeks of reporting on the Hamas missile attacks, with no end in sight.

Day 14: Bigotry
by MC

Bigot: one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

It is half past three in the afternoon. the missile attacks re-started within minutes of the end of the hudna humanitarian truce. Not that they really stopped — there were multiple violations on the part of Hamas, but then one expects that. This is called bigotry, when I expect Hamas to be incapable of ‘civilised’ behaviour. Bigotry is very common when Judeo-Christians interact with Muslims, such as when the European Union bombed innocent civilians in Serbia:

It reported that as few as 489 and as many as 528 Yugoslav civilians were killed in the NATO airstrikes. NATO spokesman responded to claims Jamie Shea said, “There is always a cost to defeat an evil,“ he said. “It never comes free, unfortunately. But the cost of failure to defeat a great evil is far higher.” [emphasis added]

I am a bigot because I see the blatant EU hypocrisy. The EU and the USA were both guilty of taking the side of Islamic aggressors against peaceful civilians, but the USA is not ‘condemning’ civilian casualties in Gaza to the extent the EU is.

I see the professionalism of the Israeli Air Force on a daily basis. They will abort missions rather than hit civilians. The EU/NATO strikes against innocent civilians in Serbia did not have to cope with human shields either, but their hit rate against Serbian civilians was much higher, and there are accusations that they purposely targeted civilians.

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Global Mosque Report: June 2014

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This is the latest in a series of monthly reports by our British correspondent JP on the progress of worldwide Islamization, as represented by the building of mosques, and activities associated with mosques.

Global Mosque Report (GMR) — June 2014
by JP

“We had already remarked a sound of chanting, and we found that we were looking into a mosque, where about a hundred Moslems were attending their evening rite. Through the dim light we could see their arms stretch up in aspiration, and then whack down till their whole bodies were bowed and their foreheads touched the floor in an obeisance that was controlled and military, that had no tinge of private emotion about it. The sound of their worship twanged like a bow. They rose again, relaxed and we thought the prayer must be over; but again they strained up tautly, and again they beat the floor. It looked as if it were healthy and invigorating to perform, like good physical jerks, which, indeed, the Moslem rite incorporates to a greater degree than any other liturgy of the great religions. Five times during the day a Moslem must say prayer, and during these prayers he must throw up his arms and then get down to the ground anything from seven to thirteen times. As the average man likes taking physical exercise but has to be forced into it by some external power, this routine probably accounts for part of the popularity of Islam. We watched till a fezed head turned towards us. It was strange to eavesdrop on a performance so firmly based on self-confidence of success and solidarity with the big battalion and feel diffident, not because one was on the side of failure and the beaten battalion, but because the final issue of the battle had not been as was expected.”*

Of note during June 2014 in a crowded field were reports of a new traffic light system at Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque costing over US $2 million and the renaming of three mosques in Gambia after deliberations by the Committee of Banjul Muslim Elders. Not to mention the hullabaloo in Bendigo after its council approved a controversial mosque proposal.

USA

Florida

Ramadan report featured Islamic Society of Brevard mosque in south Melbourne. Its spokesman said that even though the mosque had been expanded three times, congregants occasionally had to pray in the parking lot.

Report on the $1.9 million renovation of the Islamic Center of Greater Miami serving the community of South Florida Muslims estimated at about a hundred and fifty thousand. The renovations include a plush $25,000 gold and maroon carpet, cushions, and copper-toned dome.

Idaho

Islamic Society of Pocatello excited about construction of its mosque due for completion at the end of June. “It’s going to be a very open space,” said general secretary of the Islamic Society, Daniel Hummel. According to another report, the Islamic Society of Southeastern Idaho took on a big project when it decided to convert an old fast food outlet into a sacred space.

Illinois

Report on Ramadan activities of Chicago-area Muslims. On fasting, Imam Hisham AlQaisi of the Islamic Foundation in Villa Park said it’s “akin to the saying of you don’t know what you have until you don’t have it.”

New Jersey

A Midland Park resident appealed to the borough against the decision of its Zoning Board to approve an application by an Islamic foundation to convert a Korean church on Irving Street into a mosque. “I find the application incomplete, at a minimum, and defective,” Joan Doumas said in her letter of appeal.

Michigan

Two Korans found burnt near a mosque in Dearborn. Previously, Pastor Terry Jones and a group of motorcyclists had announced a rally against the threat of Islamic law being implemented in the U.S. This was due to take place on Flag Day, 14 June 2014, in front of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn.

Minnesota

Report on the closure of a historic Catholic church in St. Paul that has re-opened as a mosque. Feisal M. Elmi, spokesman for Darul-Uloom Islamic Center, said, “There are a lot of East Africans in the area, and we want to give them a place to worship, a place to be educated, a community space.”

New York State

Jose Sanchez, owner of a boxing gym in an East Harlem tenement, embroiled in a row with his landlord after the latter leased the premises to a West African spiritual leader for his displaced Masjid Aqsa Mosque. Sanchez plans to take his case to the Manhattan Housing Court.

Terror investigation led to major drug bust at the Islamic Center of Flatbush.

Tennessee

US Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of a group of neighbors who tried unsuccessfully to block construction of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. See here and here for the role played by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in defense of the mosque.

The case against a burial site at the same mosque was also dismissed.

Canada

Alberta

The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (ISCC) announced special arrangements would be in place to ensure taxi services would run as normal during Calgary Stampede week despite coinciding with Ramadan. Atthar Mahmood, vice-president of the council, said “To assure that all services are available to the guests and for the taxi drivers, the ISCC will be providing Iftari (ending fast) at the Al Madinah Downtown location at 421 Riverfront Ave. S.E. Delicious foods and drinks will be accessible to drivers and Muslim Stampede visitors, along with evening prayers. People will be able to undo their fast here and offer prayers, then they can resume their services to our beautiful city visitors.”

Ontario

Two Mississaugan Muslims lodged a complaint with Ontario Human Rights Tribunal after being issued with parking tickets while attending mosque prayers. They believe the early Friday afternoon parking restriction discriminates against Muslims.

Bulgaria

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The War That Never Ended

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One hundred years ago today a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie. The grand duke — the heir to the Austrian throne — was shot while traveling in what would today be called a motorcade. He was paying an official visit to Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was then a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Princip’s action was the trigger for a four-year catastrophe that eventually became known as the Great War or the World War. Later events forced a renaming, and it became the First World War or World War One.

Four and a half years after that summer day, Bosnia, Austria-Hungary, and the entire traditional political order of Central and Eastern Europe had ceased to exist. The German, Austrian, and Ottoman Empires were no more. Austria and Hungary were no longer politically conjoined. The Russian Empire had been ejected from Central Europe, and its tsar had been replaced by a cabal of Communist revolutionaries whose murderous brutality would have made even the most bloodthirsty of the tsars blanch. Independent states sprang up where for centuries none had existed. Yet the variegated statelets of the Balkans were cobbled together into a single artificial entity called Yugoslavia whose weakness and instability suited the interests of the victorious Western Allies who created it. In contrast, the remains of the Ottoman Empire were carved up into political entities with arbitrary boundaries drawn by the same Allies, once again according to their own state interests.

And so the world that we know today was created out of the ashes of the one that preceded it. The arrangements made by the victors after the Great War maintained and exacerbated earlier tensions while removing the inhibitions imposed by the now-discarded imperial structures. The result guaranteed an eventual reprise of the Great War. Armies and paramilitaries and revolutionaries and partisans rampaged across Europe in one direction or another, over and over again, until the entire continent had been soaked in blood, all except Sweden and Switzerland — which served as arms factory and banker, respectively, for the belligerents.

Gavrilo Princip’s gunshots opened the door to the charnel house known as the 20th century. The Great War was billed as the “war to end all wars”, but instead it ushered in a never-ending war. Cold, lukewarm, or hot: that war is still with us today, a hundred years later.

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We’ve written before about the assassination of Grand Duke Franz Ferdinand and the fateful events of the summer of 1914, so I won’t be covering them in detail here. They began with Gavrilo Princip’s pistol shots and ended with the guns of August. The inexorable chain of events leading from the one to the other included (in chronological order):

  • Austrian ultimatum to Serbia
  • Evasive reply by the Serbs
  • Bilateral conferences and consultations between different pairs of countries, with no meaningful result
  • Mobilization of Austria against Serbia
  • Mobilization of Serbia against Austria
  • Austrian declaration of war on Serbia, followed by the bombardment of Belgrade
  • General mobilization by Russia
  • German ultimatum to Russia
  • General mobilization by Austria
  • General mobilization by France
  • General mobilization by Germany
  • German declaration of war on Russia
  • German declaration of war on France, followed by the invasion of France through Belgium
  • British declaration of war on Germany
  • Austrian declaration of war on Russia
  • French declaration of war on Austria
  • British declaration of war on Austria

By August 12, all the major dominoes had fallen, and the Great War was underway. In the memorable words of British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”

The unprecedented mechanized slaughter on the Western Front became the deepest single trauma experienced by the collective psyche of the Western world since the days of the Black Death. It began with the stalemate on the Marne in the fall of 1914 and continued for four interminable bloody years until the entry of the United States into the war and the attrition of German resources made an Allied victory possible.

The catastrophe of 1914-18 was not anticipated by any of the Great Powers, but it should have been. The Crimean war of 1853-56, and especially the American Civil War of 1861-65, provided a foretaste of what lay ahead at Verdun and Passchendaele. Yet the general staffs of Germany, Russia, France, and Britain had planned for a conflict that bore a closer resemblance to the Napoleonic Wars — the proverbial “last war”. Technological innovations — including long-range artillery, rifled muskets, the machine gun, and the tank — transformed the Great War into hellish indiscriminate slaughter. Yet no tactics had been devised to break the resulting horrific stalemate.

Mass conscription of cannon fodder for the front made certain that every city, town, and village gained a direct, immediate understanding of what modern warfare had become. A large proportion of fit young European men were killed, maimed, or “shell-shocked”. Virtually every family felt the effects.

It was through this universally experienced trauma that the Great War created the modern world. Later catastrophic effects extended and enhanced the trauma of 1914-18, infecting an entire culture with post-traumatic stress disorder.

So many small decisions, so many enormous consequences. What would have happened if the German general staff had not decided to ship Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a.k.a. Lenin, in a sealed train from Switzerland to the Finland Station in St. Petersburg in April 1917? What if Alexander Kerensky had remained as the head of the Provisional Government, keeping Russia in the war and forcing an earlier armistice?

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Global Mosque Report: May 2014

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This is the latest in a series of monthly reports by our British correspondent JP on the progress of worldwide Islamization, as represented by the building of mosques, and activities associated with mosques.

Global Mosque Report (GMR) — May 2014
by JP

This is the tale of Avondale Islamic Centre. It’s like the Mosque on the Prairie, except it’s in New Zealand, and it’s a real mosque so everyone is trying to kill each other.

— Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine, 21 May 2014

See the New Zealand section for details of the holy war launched by a firebrand Salafist imam and his followers on other Muslims, private security guards, and New Zealand Herald reporters covering the story.

Note also Paul Wilkinson’s report on phases of Islamisation in three English towns: Whitley Bay, Dudley, and Bradford.

Finally, some commentators at recent online discussions about the British Islamic schools Trojan Horse plot provided links to the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque, first aired on 15 January 2007 — a link is repeated here in the end notes.

USA

Iowa

One of the founding members of the Clinton Islamic Center, Dr. Anis Ansari, elected president for the fourth time in the past twelve years.

New Jersey

Bridgewater residents jeered and disputed traffic expert testimony that suggested the proposed Al Falah Center mosque development would not have a negative impact on local traffic. The next planning board meeting at the Bridgewater-Raritan High School is scheduled for 30 June.

New York State

Report on plans by the Islamic Society of Central New York to build a $1 million mosque-community center on land it owns on East Seneca Turnpike in the town of Onondaga. “Our numbers are growing — we need more space,” said society President Mohamed Khater.

Oklahoma

A federal appeals court ruled that a Christian police captain from Tulsa was rightfully punished for refusing to enter a mosque for a police appreciation ceremony.

South Carolina

The Islamic Center of Columbia, also known as Masjid al-Muslimiin, held a ‘Share Islam Day’ for those interested in the area’s diverse spirituality.

Tennessee

Senior Judge Paul Summers of Davidson County appointed to hear a case over a county-approved cemetery at the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro after all other judges in Rutherford County recused themselves from the matter.

Washington

Redmond residents concerned over plans for the proposed two-storey, 22,467 square feet Anjuman-e-Burhani Mosque on empty land near Microsoft Corporation’s headquarters.

Canada

Ontario

Hamilton Downtown Mosque held a fun fair at its new premises to raise funds for further refurbishment.

Czech Republic

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A Brand New Islam Law for Austria

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One of the last acts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before it disintegrated in the aftermath of the Great War was to pass the “Islam Law” of 1912, which codified the religious rights of Muslims. The law was deemed necessary because of the participation of Muslim soldiers in the imperial army after the annexation of Bosnia in 1908.

Modern Austria has inherited the Islam Law, but Islam-critics have long contended that the state has failed to enforce the crucial provision that Islamic practices must not violate the laws of Austria. After years of contention, a revision of the Islam Law is in the works, and — not surprisingly — has stirred new controversy, since Austria’s increasingly powerful Islamic community has had a say in the detailed provisions of the revised law.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff has commissioned translations of an introduction to the public controversy about the law, followed by an article about these unfolding events.

For readers who are interested in the text of the original law, see the Islam Law of 1912 in German, French, and English.

Many thanks to JLH for translating this comprehensive introduction by Christian Zeitz:

The completely unrestrained expansion of Islamic influence has long been a thorn in the flesh of Islam critics in Austria. More and more aspects of everyday life are subsumed by the ritual demands of believing Muslims and — frequently in a bizarre fashion — make a beneficial exchange between native Austrians and Muslim immigrants impossible. The left and like-minded political elite are working diligently on a glorification of alleged Islamic cultural achievements, in order to legitimize their claim of “enrichment” of a multicultural society with foreign influences. Economic and political ties between Austria and influential Islamic countries — especially Turkey and the Arab oil-producing countries — are being unremittingly intensified, and this increases their influence on Islamic institutions in Austria. The out-of-control proliferation of so-called Islamic “cultural organizations,” i.e., the multiplicity of oriental convenience stores and video stores run by “backyard mosques” provides a comfortable insulation for the creeping propagation of sharia. And in Austria, all that may no longer be criticized and opposed — even with qualifications — because Islam is a “legally recognized religious community” under the protection of the criminal religious “hate speech paragraphs” in the law and the anti-discrimination legislation.

In 1912 Islam was recognized as a legally equal religious community through a special law called the “Islam Law.” The step was considered necessary, because of urging by Bosnian soldiers belonging to the imperial-and-royal army of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary at that time. Of course, the Islam Law provides the qualification in §6/2 that protection of Islam applies only insofar as its beliefs, rituals and practice do not contradict the laws and customs of Austria. In 1988, by means of an ordinance considered by experts to be illegal, the legal basis was created for the IGGiÖ (Islamic Religious Community in Austria), which gives Islam exclusive claim to representation. The IGGiÖ has established itself as a powerful and politically influential lobby, which pursues Islamic interests in all areas, exploits naïve representatives of the political establishment and ensures a centrally coordinated religious instruction in public schools. Its advocates belong to a radical — albeit set up as “dialogue” — type of Sunni Islam, and see themselves as a toehold for Turkish and Wahhabi positions.

For more than100 years, politically responsible individuals in the Austrian republic have not succeeded in implementing the provisions of the Islam law or enforcing its spirit. For that reason, critics have long demanded a reformulation of the law, restricting the leeway of interpretation, emphasizing the interests of Austria, preventing an extra-legal status for Islam and creeping sharia — as it is or should be in a nation of laws for all churches and faith groups.

Unfortunately, the IGGiÖ has realized that the implementation of such a legal project would mean the end of its time of doing as it pleases in Austria. So — in complete secrecy, behind the backs of the public, enlisting the responsible foreign minister, Sebastian Kurz and several policymakers — it has taken the opportunity to finagle an outline of a new Islam Law that would even enhance its position, increase the influence of Islam on both culture and society, and could mobilize public money for Islamic projects like special cemeteries and ministry to soldiers.

So for several weeks now, critics and juridical experts have been trying too prevent an unnoticed rubber-stamping of this proposal in the Austrian national Assembly. They are letting those in power know that such a legal construction would clearly discriminate against the other religious communities in comparison to Islam and its radical representation, and would diminish surveillance of extremist groups and projects. It should be the intent of a constructive Islam Law to preserve the interests of Austrians and establish religious peace in the land. The following central elements must be considered:

  • Publication of the fundamentals of the Islamic faith and obligatory restriction of carrying out the tenets of the faith to the published content. That includes filing a certified translation of the Koran and those Hadiths deemed relevant.
  • Restriction of financing of the Islamic religious community and/or yet to be founded or recognized Islamic communities to domestic finance sources.
  • Restriction of possible membership in the Islamic religious community to natural persons, to preclude lobbying for cultic and religious practices through the membership of shadowy organizations of doubtful background.

Austria will soon have to decide whether it wants to establish in orderly fashion the primacy of the secular state versus the aspirations for an Islamic divine state, or intends to allow a further embedding of radical variants of Islam.

Mag. Christian Zeitz
Academic Director
Institute for Applied Political Economics

Below is a article from EurActiv.de (also translated by JLH) with a different perspective on the revision of the Islam Law of 1912:

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